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Radio National (ABC - Australian Broadcasting Corporation) download the article in Microsoft Word format ENCOUNTER with Margaret Coffey on Sunday 12/11/2000 Maluku Summary: For two years now we have been hearing instalments in the continuing saga of communal violence in Maluku, one of Indonesia's eastern provinces. News media report each episode in terms of Christians versus Muslims, or Muslims versus Christians. The Indonesian Army plays a shady role in this story and the Indonesian Government invariably comes across as ineffectual. This Encounter queries the role of religion in the conflict. What blame should President Wahid bear? Or the army? And from what quarter might come a solution? These are important questions, because many people in Maluku look to Australia for help. Details of Transcript: Street sounds Kaplale (In Indonesian) Coffey: This man is talking about his village, on the island of Saparua, two hours by speedboat east of Ambon. His village is called Sirisori Islam, to distinguish it from Sirisori Christian. Reader: Sirisori used to be a single village, just one village. Then it became split, with the arrival of religions in the village. It so happened that my own family, Kaplale, was involved in bringing Islam to the area. Coffey: His name is Dur Kaplale and he hasn't been back to his village for two years. He cannot go back because he is doesn't want to take sides in the fighting that has racked all of Maluku Province in Eastern Indonesia since early 1999. I'm Margaret Coffey and this is an Encounter with questions about Maluku: why are Christians and Muslims killing each other in a place which prided itself on friendly relations between communities? Why is the fighting getting worse when Indonesia has a president who is committed to religious tolerance, pluralism and democracy? What can be done? Ambonese song. Man: Plenty, everywhere, trouble, big trouble also .. so we come here to do something for our country. Woman: My church was burned, the second of Christmas, 26 December, 1999, yes, was burned. My friends in church, of Silo church, must run away. Everybody homeless, everybody have nothing. Woman: These people arrived by boat to Darwin and they were moved to Port Hedland where they spent three months through the heat, then they came to Adelaide on a 28 day visa.... There are five households, two of five people, two of two and a single person, two twelve year olds who are currently in primary school and the oldest person is 60. Coffey: Far away from Maluku, in the South Australian suburb of Port Adelaide, fifteen Ambonese Christians have found a refuge in the local Uniting Church community. Man: Our church in Ambon finished: Muslim and military together attacked Christianity and broke everything from Christianity. Woman Of course I am here but my soul in Ambon. Yeh, I am here but my soul in Ambon. Man: May be Australian Government can help us do something for our country. Not much we can do for now. Woman: And then there is this question of raising awareness which is why we are all here tonight but in any given church congregation I am sure there are varying levels of awareness of these situations. We have tried to keep the situation in Eastern Indonesia up front with a current affairs newsboard with this weeks news, there has been a prayer time around Adelaide for the widening circle that is standing with this particular group and a prayer chain if there were times of crisis - people have gone through some very deep grief crises, as you can imagine. Coffey: Since that fateful January, 1999, several thousand people have died, hundreds of thousands have become refugees, houses, villages and towns are now destroyed, and the economy of Maluku is in tatters. Archival sound Christians youths are on a rampage, smashing the homes of their Muslim neighbours in the village of Benteng Atas. They used machetes and sword to chop open the doors, once inside breaking everything they can find. It's hard to make sense of the violence going on here. Neighbours have become sworn enemies. Music Archival sound I feel very, very happy … (Student reaction to resignation of President Suharto). Prior: It's important to remember that when the students threw Suharto out in May '98 it was precisely Muslim and Christians working together whether as university students, whether on fact-finding commissions, whether in NGOs ... so I think we should remember that however bad the situation is now it was an interfaith grouping that actually threw Suharto out. What is happening now is of course extremely bad. There have always been local tensions between Muslims and Christians but until this year or last year they have always been solved locally. The fact that they are expanding is quite clearly due to support, sponsorship from Jakarta. Gill: I guess we are informed primarily by our partners in Indonesia, that is to say the churches in the Malukus and the Communion of Churches in Indonesia. That's the equivalent of the National Council of Churches here. Coffey: Rev David Gill is the general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Australia. Gill: Beyond what we're hearing from the Churches of course, we try to make our own assessment of what is going on and we try to speak with Foreign Affairs people here in Australia to know their assessment of what is going on and generally try to see what would be a responsible role for a Council of Churches in Australia to play. It's not easy because everybody is hankering for a straightforward, simple solution, but it is not a straightforward simple problem. Coffey: Could you explain that? Gill: Yes, it's often portrayed I think as a matter of inter-religious conflict, the Muslims in the Malukus clobbering the Christians and the Christians in turn clobbering the Muslims. Now that is a gross oversimplification because I think the real problems are not in the Malukus themselves, they are in Jakarta, they are elsewhere in Indonesia, they have to do with the power struggles that are going on at the present time, they have to do with the economic crisis and what that's done to peoples' fears and anxieties and insecurities, they have to do with the weakening of central administration, the armed forces, the police, the civil administration generally. Various interested players in all of this are I think exploiting the situation and exploiting religion in the Malukus. The overall picture for Indonesia is still of Christians and Muslims managing to live reasonably well side by side and that must not be forgotten. Music Coffey: Listening, reading it seems what goes on in Indonesia is told as shadow theatre: if it is true it is also beguiling. We have to ask about these shadowy forces, this sponsorship from Jakarta, how real it is, how much it absolves local people from responsibility, local culture from blame. Kaplale (In Indonesian) Reader: Sirisori is a village where the people are extremely hard, hard in the sense that there's a myth that if you can survive in the Muslim village of Sirisori, with people as hard as they are, then you can be a leader even outside Sirisori. This is because you will be tested in Sirisori, how to stand for or against the demands of the community. Everyone knew who was Christian and who was Muslim but the differences were sort of blurred. In fact, it was only at the beginning of the Suharto era that the terms Sirisori Islam and Sirisori Christian began to be used. But early in the 1990s those terms were changed and there was no religious tag, Muslim or Christian. This was because the relationship between the two groups was really very close, just like between neighbouring Christian villages. When I was young, the Muslims of Sirisori actually helped build a church for a neighbouring Christian village, called Ulat. Coffey What happened to that village amity? How did village affairs come to this? Music Archival sound Muslims in Jakarta were repeating their calls for a holy war against Christians on the troubled territory of Ambon ……. …Allah akbar …. Tomagola: I predict that in the next 6 months I think the tragedy of Malukus still cannot be stopped. Coffey: You mean that there will be more killing, more confrontation? Tomagola: Yes it will continue, especially in Ambon. I think that in the south-east Maluku they have reached peaceful social reconstruction stage. In North Maluku I think now they reached the evacuation stage, meaning to send back all the refugees to their own respective villages. But in Ambon I think the situation is very, very worrying. Coffey :Is this because the Laskar are on their way to Ambon? Tomagola: They are still coming. We have asked the Pentagon and also the UN men that please send international force, consisting of ASEAN, Muslim forces and then their main tasks are just to push out those Laskar Jihad from Ambon and to catch the military deserters there, because it is those two parties that have muddled the situation there. Murphy: You'll find intellectual commentators, people in the city, who will want to deny that this has happened because there was this tradition in Maluku and more importantly a great self-identification of a lot of people in Maluku as never letting religious differences divide them in the past. Particularly in the southern part of the island group, people would identify themselves as Ambonese or as Malukan first and then talk about Christianity or Islam because they still had so many cultural artefacts that were same to both groups. However for a variety of reasons that has really changed and eroded and it's my opinion that people who now talk about this as religion not being a fundamental component of what's going on now are nostalgic and are not dealing with what has happened there. Coffey: Dan Murphy's report on Maluku for the International Crisis Group, the Brussels-based organisation headed by Gareth Evans, will be published this month. Murphy: If you want to talk about it in broad cultural terms, a couple of things have happened to traditional culture. You know, throughout this century you have had both Christian clergymen and Muslim religious teachers seeking to cleanse their various religions of the cultural components locally that had been grafted on to the world religions. You know very many people would claim to be Christian but at the same time they would worship ancestors and have a whole variety of quasi religious beliefs that had nothing to do with the world religions. Obviously the clergymen, the imams wanted to clean this stuff out to enhance their own power and also as the people of Maluku themselves have wanted to join the modern world they have increasingly seen their traditional culture as backwards and so you have had a slow process of washing away sort of the unique culture of the place and seeing it replaced with religion. Now within the Suharto years about 30 years ago there was a radical restructuring of the way power was divided up in the village and local level that essentially saw political power taken away from traditional voices of moral authority and traditional cultural authority and put in the hands of people who were beholden to Jakarta. This also served to erode traditional culture. And the third component has been a massive wave of migration over the last 20 years of mostly Muslim people, Bugis and Buton and Makassar of Sulawesi who are the great sea-faring people of Indonesia and they disperse everywhere. They've moved in and they don't have much of a cultural affinity with anybody there but they identify as Muslim. All three of these factors - in the long-winded fashion I am now getting to - have contributed to the pre-eminent self-identification as either being Christian or Muslim whereas may be 30 years ago that wouldn't have been happening. Prior: We are tribal peoples and tribal peoples can be extremely hospitable and extremely friendly and very understanding but when somebody's dignity is stood on they become extremely resistant. And you must remember that most tribal peoples in Indonesia, that is outside Java they are all tribal, economically we've lost, culturally we're looked down on, politically we've been silenced and this for 40 years, the only free zone left to us is our faith, is our religion, and therefore to interfere with our church, it is the last free zone left, and therefore people react violently. Archival sound In Ambon more than 2000 k east of Jakarta, order spiralled out of control after an isolated dispute during which a Christian village man insulted Islamic beliefs.... Coffey: This is how it began .. in January, 1999, on the day Muslims celebrated the end of the fasting month. Archival sound … Christian and Muslim village people battled. At least one of the dead was shot, others were beaten and hacked. Local police were unable to stop angry mobs burning two mosques.. Kaplale (In Indonesian) Reader: At the time of the conflict there were practically no Muslim Sirisorians on Ambon Island as the people had gone home - that's the custom for Lebaran. Last year's Lebaran was celebrated in a big way, so almost everyone came home. Then, when they heard of the Ambon conflict people were busy putting on get-togethers and they didn't take a lot of notice. But then there were reports that Ambon was totally destroyed, not a building left standing, so they were worried about their own houses in Ambon. Then rumours began to circulate among Sirisori Muslims of impending attacks by people from a mumber of Christian villages. The Sirisori chief immediately took steps, contacting the heads of Christian villages. He discovered that it was all false, there no attacks, it was straight out provocation. But people were still getting all sorts of strange information about what was going on in Ambon, and the people were told to take precautions and be on their guard against attacks by Christians. Now the Sirisorians who had come home from Ambon went back and were startled to find buildings still standing, their own houses were still as they had been left. So they had been fed disinformation while they were in Sirisori - and don't forget the character of the villagers: hard, quick to anger, and easily provoked. Then a little bit later, there were incidents where clove trees were chopped down, and this raised terrible anger and desire for vengeance among the Sirisori Muslims. They were wild with rage knowing this had been done by Christians whom they had known so long. Hundreds of clove trees were chopped down. What else could they rely on? There was only the sea and even the sea itself was closed to them because of the situation. So, open conflict was the result. And it was on both sides, because the Christians too had taken the bait of provocation. The mere fact that Sirisori was on guard, in defensive mode, helped to heat up the situation between the village and a number of neighbouring Christian villages, till there was no chance of avoiding conflict. Murphy: You know if you want to talk about the antecedents of what happened in Maluku and in North Maluku you definitely need to look well beyond religion. However, if you go and talk to a refugee, a policeman, almost anybody who lives out there now they will identify themselves first and foremost as either a Christian or a Muslim and they will talk about the present conflict in terms of the confessional divide and a struggle between the two religions. This is a new development and I do agree with people who say it is not the fundamental problem there but it is the one that is now most visible and until you have dealt with that you can't really deal with anything else. Coffey: So it's an interpretation that has taken over the situation and not just locally but also nationally and internationally? Murphy: That's a crucial part of the conflict at the moment, particularly the national conflict. You can talk about what's happened in Maluku in two broad phases. One is the early phase where you had ferocious fighting between native people, between Christians and Muslims, beginning in January 1999. Now in the year 2000 you've had an influx of what can only be called radical Muslim political interests that have backed a series of Jihad fighters that have been sent out there for a variety of political ends that have taken the conflict in to a new national context. Essentially what was happening you had a roughly 50 per cent Christian, 50 per cent divide in Maluku, may be a little bit of an edge to Muslims, but Christians were holding their own and in many cases giving a beating to their former neighbours. What was natural for the local Muslim community to reach out to the demographics of Indonesia which is 90 -95 per cent Muslim and say we are getting slaughtered, please help us. Once that happened you had a large number of Islamic politicians all over the country who didn't have a voice in the Suharto years jumping on this as an excellent vehicle for their political ambitions. Coffey: The news reports insist that religion is at the heart of the conflict, and as Dan Murphy points out, the opportunists join in to support this version. Experience tells us surely - from Northern Ireland for example - that that is rarely the whole simple story. No-one should take the opportunists at their word … especially would-be peacekeepers and concerned observers. Religion becomes a marker, a sign, a synonym for many things. But always, also, it is a ground for hope, resolution and reconciliation. Kaplale (In Indonesian) Reader: I wasn't a university student then. I was just a member of the community and a youth. I was involved in the Bailio Foundation, that's an NGO which is active in community organisation, small economy and so on. It is for Muslims and Christians, it never discriminates between them because it runs on the principle of cooperation and trust. So we decided to form a humanitarian volunteers team. I became a community organiser in one of the first camps for victims of violence. The volunteer teams did come under pressure from people who claimed to represent religious institutions, but I saw they were mainly the elites. These elites include business people and politicians as well, because political parties have their bases among the masses and political parties are already nicely categorised, Muslim and Christian. And religious leaders can also be classified as an elite wanting conflict because, well, religious leaders can be triggers for conflict, or they can put out the fire of conflict. They can be both. Their pronouncements, whether in the Church or in the Mosque, tend to inflame the community - and then the community think this is reasonable. One example: there's an Islamic edict put out by a religious leader, deliberately created as part of what I call inflammatory theology, to the effect that to kill a Christian is "halal" - permitted, and to see one and not kill him is "haram" - forbidden. So if I, as a follower of Islam, kill a Christian, that's permitted, it's not a crime, I can enter into Heaven. And if I see a Christian and I don't kill him, that's forbidden. If you do something that's forbidden, you will go to hell. So, that's an actual edict. I personally very much regret this kind of thing. But I have studied Islam a good deal, and not just from anyone, but from my grandfather. So that I know that an edict like that is very far from Islam. I consider it a violation of Islam itself. Islam is violated by people within Islam itself. Tomagola: I am a Muslim myself and when Muslims were slaughtered in North Maluku I stood up and spoke out quite frequently here in Jakarta but I said I am not for Muslim but I am for whole humanity. Coffey: Thamrin Amal Tomagola is from Halmahera in North Maluku. He's a sociologist at the University of Indonesia, dean of social sciences at the Open University ...and a member of TAPAK Ambon, the umbrella organisation for 11 non-government organisations focussed on the human rights and development needs of Maluku. Tomagola: So if now Christians are slaughtered also then I will stand up again. So I have said that to my Muslim comrades but I think they could not swallow that argument and they already threaten me to kill me because they said I have taken sides with the Christians. Coffey: What effect has this had on you, this ongoing conflict, on you and your sense of religious identity? Tomagola: I am beginning to question that. I think we as followers of any religion now have to seriously think it over whether we are really Muslims or whether we are really Christians or not because I think the teachings of religions have been manipulated by these elite politicians. So I said in a seminar just recently that I think the understanding of religion should be internalised quite deeply. Coffey: But how come you internalised it in a particular way, but may be someone close to you, your neighbours, your family, might internalised it differently? Tomagola: What I got from my parents is I will call it surface level kind of teaching of Islam but because I had the chance to study and to read myself all the sources then I have a very different view of how to be a true Muslim. Now actually I am in a very awkward position with my own brothers, my own sisters, my own parents. They all say the Christians were the ones who started the conflict and they deserve to be slaughtered now. I say no - and we have very fierce debates. But eventually I told them, OK, our religion in Arabic says, "For you your opinion, for me my opinion". And we just hold to our own opinion. Coffey: This must be very distressing for many people, for you and for other people who find themselves in this position? Tomagola Oh yes... but I have support from my wife and my daughter. Coffey: Maluku is/was a patchwork of different power groups. Traditional sultanates, Muslims, Christians, Suharto's old political party Golkar,even criminal organisations. In Ambon for example, the Christians were important in the bureaucracy and for generations they guarded that role and the opportunities it provided. But at the end of the 80s, Suharto for his own political reasons began to cultivate the support of Muslims - and the Christian advantage was threatened. Tomagola: So at that time, at national level, both in the civilian camps and in the military camps, the urban progressive Muslims are very strong, so that opened the possibility for local elites there who could use Islam as their main tickets to any offices in local government and also to any political parties there, mainly in Golkar and also the connections to a lot of facilities both in economic and political terms there, so that situation at the national level acted as an opener for the local Muslim elites to enter every institution there. And at that time the local Muslim elites there used that opportunity quite efficiently and pushed the Christian elites from all institutions, both in political and local government and in the business. That's why I think and I have told the Indonesian Intellectuals Association that you have contributed something to the conflict of the Malukus by opening that opportunity to the Muslim local elites. Coffey: So what you are pointing to generally is a failure of the elites, from different quarters, from the Muslim quarter, from the Christian quarter, from the civil, military quarters to be in a sense self-conscious? Tomagola: Yes, I think that's right. They were too concerned with their own political promotion and career and in that process I think they have put the whole Malukus in a very dangerous situation. Coffey: Thamrin Tomagola points to a failure of leadership in Maluku, including a failure on the part of religious leaders in his own Muslim community. I want to hear that among religious leaders I will find the voices of moderation. Murphy: Let me tell you this ... If they are there they are being drowned out completely. I spent a lot of time with the Protestant church of the Malukus which is the largest Protestant church, I spent a lot of time with the Catholic Church - probably only 5 per cent of the population are Catholics but they are always well organised and interesting to talk to - I spent much time in mosques and with Muslim religious leaders. Now everybody as a general principle loves good and hates evil, right, and they will all tell you that they love good and they hate evil. I did not find a willingness on the part of anybody that I met in Maluku to really stand up and condemn both sides equally and say in real terms that we need to clean up our own communities. Every time you talk to somebody they say sure we support peace and as soon as the Muslims or as soon as the Christians take actions X, Y and Z, then we will talk about changing ourselves. And a part of this in candid conversations I had particularly with a Christian set of clergymen, they said we don't want to say certain things given the emotional pitch our congregations are at the moment, because we will lose them. I mean religious leaders are many things and they are also politicians and you know if their constituency has things it fervently doesn't want to hear you'll find in most cases that most religious leaders won't say them. Coffey: This is a harsh judgment: and it is hard to decide whether it is a fair one, on the context of real risk and real fear. Archival sound (Muslim speaker) Many of them was died by shooting by Christian side, the weapons just like military weapons but used by the red sides. (Reporter) The red side: you mean the Christian side? Yes, the Christian side killed Muslim people, 236 was died in this Al Fatah hospital. (Christian) We must forgive even we have lost all our possessions, lost our beloved one, we must try to forgive our Muslim sister and our Muslim brothers and it is not so easy. Murphy: It's a classic story - you have lots and lots and lots of idle young men on both sides, disenfranchised, they are clearly people who are close to ... there is not a single person in Maluku who isn't a refugee or who doesn't know a refugee very well. And yeh, they are very rife to be recruited in to these type of militias/gangs because all of a sudden you can be a respected member of your community doing a vital job as opposed to a layabout on the street corner. I don't have a really good finger on the pulse of how much that is contributing to the conflict. What's certain is that there are a number of people both Muslim and Christian who have seen their own status elevated by the fighting and who are disincentivised from really wanting to support long term peaceful solutions because it will take away their whole reason to be, which is another tricky aspect of this conflict. Tomagola: I think we have to start by differentiating between the local government and the national government: both are hopeless and helpless. The question is why. I think both Gus Dur and Megawati are quite paralysed. I think they have been put as hostages by the civilian bureaucracy and military bureaucracy, meaning that in those two bureaucracies the men and women from the old regime are still there and still holding strategic positions so they could sabotage any policies from Gus Dur and also from Megawati easily. Gus Dur is also very hopeless, he doesn't have what ………… Coffey: Everyone - well-wishers, opponents - accuses the Indonesian Government for failing Maluku. Witoelar: What I am trying to say is that outside of Indonesia it is the Laskar Jihad part that is getting more attention, like the militias. You see? It is so unfair, so unbalanced. Coffey: Erna Witoelar is a minister in the Indonesian Government. Witoelar: What you here are reading about the Laskar Jihad, what they are doing to the Christians, we several months ago also heard in Indonesia, it was mentioned in all the mosques how the Christians are killing Muslims, how they are trying to do ethnic cleansing of the Islamic there and this is causing people to become angry OK. Many, Many reconciliation efforts are happening in Indonesia, Many inter-faith efforts to do humanitarian work are happening in Indonesia, close cooperation between Islamic group and Christian workers are working there. So it is a process of healing that we are still doing now. It is unfair that the outside world think that we are doing nothing about it because we do. Murphy: You're not going to like what I'm going to say because I don't think inter-religious dialogue is worth anything until you introduce basic justice and peace to the streets of the province. There are new victims being created every single day, all of which is to say, in that climate, until people believe they can walk the streets and be safe, that if some one kills their neighbour there is a chance they will be brought to justice, that there is some kind of guaranteed protection from harm, I think that talks of interfaith reconciliation and dialogue are really not going to go anywhere, because, you know, there have been many attempts made in the past. Rather than succeed they have even created the air of hopelessness because you've had these grand coalitions of Christian and Muslim leaders cobbled together who sit down for a powwow and they've signed some document claiming that they love good and hate evil and then a bomb blows up the next day and kills 20 people in the market and the message to the local folk is you know that these types of efforts are meaningless, it's impossible for us to sit down and make an agreement that means anything. And more to the point they'll say you know the reason this came apart is because the Christians slash the Muslims didn't deal in good faith. This is an issue that I personally feel very strong on - until you introduce basic law enforcement, inter-religious dialogue is not going to accomplish anything. It is not the first step, the first step is safety Reader: My grandfather taught me, to kill someone is not good. The Quran actually requires us to respect other religions and there's a verse, "La qum dino qum wa liaddin", meaning "For you, your religion, for me, my religion." Another thing, it takes time to create a movement to counteract the kind of inflammatory theology that is found in the community. Archival sound Coffey: The most recent escalation in violence began in June, a month after 3000 members of an Islamic militia went to Maluku from Java to fight a so-called holy war in defence of the Muslim population. The militia members had been recruited on Java, and had been trained there. They had also received support from certain politicians in Jakarta. Murphy: I spoke to people in the Laskar Jihad who are again not the primary problem but they are the most urgent problem that needs to be dealt with, you know who will say yeh, Islam is a religion of peace but to promote the peace you have to have justice and protection and to have justice and protection we have to kill people now to defend ourselves because they're bad and they are dedicated to wiping us out. Coffey: The interesting thing about the Laskar Jihad is that they are not local. Murphy: They are and they aren't: the leadership of the LJ are from Java, a large number of their fighters are clearly from other Indonesian islands, they are plugged in to this growing - it's still very small - but well organised Muslim political network that is interested in having some variety of Islamic law introduced in to the Indonesian state as an ultimate objective. That said they have been embraced by some significant percentage - it's hard to tell - of the population of Maluku, Muslim population - you know again, they are probably a minimum of 50,000 to 100,000 Muslim refugees in Maluku, these people want protection and they are happy to turn to anybody who can provide it to them. So while yes the Laskar are from outside and it is a huge problem, one of the key things to remember is that there are a vast number of native Maluku Muslims who support their presence there at the moment. Kaplale (In Indonesian) Reader: The Javanese don't realize it, they are part of the Ambon cycle. And we have to make them realize it. The Laskar Jihad has to pulled out from Ambon and go back where they came from. That's what we are hoping for. The Christians feel that with the presence of the Laskar Jihad, they're going to be massacred, wiped out. There's anxiety also among the Muslims, though it may be quite different to that in the Christian communities. The Muslims feel that due to the presence of the Laskar Jihad they'll attack the Christian areas. And they are anxious about it, because they ask one another, could we possibly wipe out the entire Christian population? Wherever they go, they're always asking, when is the attack going to be? And all this anxiety is just because the Laskar Jihad came to Ambon. Murphy: There are people who describe themselves as Laskar Jesus. There are a number of Christian militia groups, who say they are fighting to protect their communities but they speak of themselves in religious terms. I met a man in Halmahera which is an island all the way in north Maluku, at the top, who told me that Jesus entered his machete and helped with his work of slaughtering Muslims in October or Nov last year. However the key difference between them and the Laskar Jihad is that they don't seem to have the unifying political idea or religious idea that the Laskar do and what I mean by that is that they are fragmented, they are not well coordinated, they seem to be community protection groups and very often the rumps of street gangs that have organised to fight during the conflict but you certainly don't have any centralised command or objective other than protection and may be getting back what you had lost locally, you know whereas the Laskar Jihad have an over-arching vision of where they would like Maluku to go, how they would like to get there and they are flying around the province all the time coordinating the efforts of their various units. Coffey: President Wahid promised to stop the Laskar Jihad getting from Java to Ambon. His orders were relayed through both the Defence Minister and the then chief of the armed forces. But the militia slipped through anyway, while the army and the police stood by. Prior: Officially Eastern Indonesia has more or less been handed over to his vice-president Megawati and Meg is so close to the army that we cannot expect anything from her in this regard. Coffey John Prior is a priest in Flores, south of Ambon and part of Eastern Indonesia. Prior: And therefore we do indeed have a vacuum. We have no-one saying in fact what is going on in the Malukus. So why Gus Dur is not saying anything as President - because the has the army involved and he has no authority over the army. The army is a country within a country, a state within a state. No-one is in charge of the army. Music Song sung by Ambonese refugee. Coffey: For the people of Maluku it would seem that there is no where to turn - the police are inadequate, the army is divided, the politicians are playing their own games. But there is a President who has personal moral authority. Prior: Personally I'd like him to forget any sort of political ambitions he might ever have had, and all that is left for him to do is to be the moral leader and I think that would superb - if he simply returned to becoming a moral leader and coming out with the truth, actually saying what is happening. Murphy: He's kept his mouth shut. He hasn't exercised much moral authority. He as a man and on general principles does believe in religious harmony, does support dialogue, does want a multi-religious, multi-cultural Indonesia where everybody has a voice. That said, he has been incredibly reluctant to really speak out and address the problems of Maluku. It is difficult to know why exactly - one likely guess is that he understands the pitch of a large proportion of the Indonesian Muslim community and knows that if he spoke out on this issue particularly against the Laskar Jihad it would be very easy for political opponents to label him as anti-Islam and fashion that in to a very effective weapon to chip away at some of his already eroded political base. Archival sound Coffey: But people need to begin somewhere. For two years Dur Kaplale has been away from home, encouraging Javanese Muslims not to add to the problems of Ambon, to see issues there not as primarily religious but as belonging to the sphere of human rights and justice. He continues to work through inter-faith contacts. Kaplale (In Indonesian) Reader: It's a personal mission, humanitarianism and cooperation with other people, but besides that it must also be a common mission. There wouldn't be much point in it as a personal mission, if it were not also a mission in common with others. Clearly, I feel it as a spiritual mission. I feel there is hope, there is hope, no matter how bad the conflict gets, there remains hope in the community. People are already thinking about how to rebuild Ambon. Coffey: This is where leadership lies in Maluku, low down, among the students, local people, young people whose religious culture connects them to a vision of human rights and justice. Kaplale (In Indonesian) Reader I hope to return to Ambon, and to my own village, because it's been so long, one or two years, that I haven't had any relationship with my own community. The people at present are not free, and it's been so long since I enjoyed the village atmosphere in my own home that I used to know. Even though there has been so much destruction, I want to live again like I used to. I want to see again the Qur'an with its gold lettering handed down from my ancestors. I'm dying to see that again, and to visit the place where I used to draw water for ritual washing before prayers. I'm so homesick for all that, and to go to the forests and the mountains. I want very much to go back and to help rebuild Ambon. Coffey: In this Encounter you heard Muslim activist Dur Kaplale - recorded in Yogyakarta by Gerry van Klinken. Nuim Khaiyath read the English translation. Tapes of the program are available as is the transcript - go to the ABC's website: http://www.abc.net.au and follow the links via the Religion gateway. Technical production by Garry Havrillay. I'm Margaret Coffey. Musical Items: CD Title: Troubled Grass and Crying Bamboo - The Music of Roti Label/CD No: Indonesian Arts Society Copyright: Christopher Basile 1998 CD Title: Be Not Afraid to Strike the Gong - The Music of Lombok Label/CD No: Indonesian Arts Society Copyright: Christopher Basile 1998 CD Title: Asmat Dream Composer: Music by Suhendi, Dody Satya, Roesli and Nano S. Label/CD No: New Music Indonesia Vol 1 Copyright: LYRCD 7415 CD Title: Metamorfosa - earth music Artist: SMACD22 Copyright: 1997 Sunset Music Australia CD Title: Gamelan Music Artist: Lou Harrison Label/CD No: 01612-67091-2 Copyright: Musicmaster Classics Further information: International Crisis Group - http://www.intl-crisis-group.org/ The Maluku Song was performed by Matthew, one of the refugees from Ambon living in Adelaide. Presenter & Executive Producer: Margaret Coffey Producer: Margaret Coffey Encounter is broadcast on Sunday at 7.10am, repeated Wednesday at 7.10pm, on Radio National, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's national radio network of ideas. Tuning in details ABC Radio Tape Sales information © 2000 ABC | Privacy Policy Received via email from: Rev J. Barr  Copyright © 1999-2000  - Ambon Berdarah On-Line * http://www.go.to/ambon HTML pages designed and maintained by Alifuru67 * http://www.oocities.org/alifuru67 Send your comments to alifuru67@egroups.com